


Sainte Nuit

by orphan_account



Series: Vampire AU [4]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, M/M, Off-screen and briefly mentioned branding, You can listen to 'Empty chairs at empty tables' while reading this, hurting oneself?, off-screen non-consensual biting and captivity, this fic is heavily influenced by Les Miserables
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 02:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19820749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which Deniss thought of his late mentors in a snowy Christmas Eve.Set about 100 years after 'The Sun Will Rise'.This work is, again, heavily influenced by Les Miserables and the musical Hamilton.





	Sainte Nuit

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a native speaker of English, and this work has not been beta'd. All mistakes are mine, and please don't hesitate to tell me if you spot anything incorrect!  
> This is completely fictional.

Deniss was sitting at his desk, with a pen in hand and a few pieces of paper in front of him. His laptop had entered stand-by mode, after a long time without any activity.  
He couldn’t focus on his task at hand. He should be writing a new article for their website, a New Year’s greeting. But the electricity in his house wasn’t really working well that night, leaving the lamp and lights flickering and his laptop-well, he struck the keyboard a few times and found that the battery was dying.  
He started with “Happy New Year from…” and decided that it was a terrible beginning the moment he wrote it down. He crumpled the piece of paper and threw it away impatiently.  
I’m not getting any work done tonight.  
He replaced the pen cap and bumped his forehead against the desk. After a few moments, he picked up a drawing pencil, starting to sketch something on another piece of paper. That had been a part of his wind-down routine for more than a hundred years. He let his mind take control, and just penned down anything that he could think of. They were not good drawings, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to put these onto their websites, nor did he rely on them to make a living.  
He was sketching a castle before he realized it. The castle on the lake, the place where he spent his adolescent years, the place where he once called home.  
It didn’t help him to calm down. He crumpled this piece of paper away and tossed it onto the floor again, before snatching another one.  
This time it was even worse. He was drawing the Alps, the snow and the bared rocky edges. He stopped once he realized what he was going to put down on paper next. The tip of his pencil touched on an unshaded area, which was supposed to be the snowy ground. He was thinking of what he saw on the television many years ago, when the lovers spent their last minute in each other’s company.  
No. I can’t.  
He closed his eyes and pressed the tip of his pencil onto the paper, with all his remaining strength. Unsurprisingly, the tip broke with a light and crisp sound. He buried his face into both palms and tried to calm down. Just as the tears started to fill his orbits, he heard something from afar. It was a song. He couldn’t figure out what the lyrics were, as it was from so far away. And he suspected it was some sort of chorale pieces in French, and all pronunciations of words were smeared out. But he knew the melody.  
He lifted his head and listened attentively for a few moments.  
It was Sainte Nuit. It must be the human’s Christmas Eve. Deniss glanced at his laptop, and it was indeed the 24th of December. Of course, the vampires don’t celebrate any Christian festivals, and no one in his neighborhood is doing so.  
But Stephane was a Catholic. He used to go to the Mass in a local church on Sundays, and they used to celebrate Christmas Eve in the castle. It was less of a religious practice for them, but more like a family gathering, if they could be called a family.  
Deniss put the pencil with a broken tip down, and the faint sounds of the Christmas carol took him back in time.  
He would start to bake a cake in the spacious kitchen in the afternoon. It often comes with a generous amount of whipped cream, sprinkled with sugar mixed with spices. Stephane would brew some mulled wine*, although he never bothered to check how much spices he put into the pot. The vin chaud-as Stephane called it-could often be a hit or miss. Chris would make some sausage pastries, and they usually had to fight for the only oven.  
Although Stephane was the only one who actually needed to eat, both vampires would also sit down at the dinner table and have some nibbles. They could never finish the cake Deniss baked, so they always ended up smearing cream onto one another’s face. Stephane used to dress in a Santa suit, and once they put a huge red reindeer nose on Deniss.  
And Stephane used to sing Christmas carols for them after dinner, when they moved to the living room with a fireplace to wrap up the night by exchanging gifts.  
Deniss was crying before he noticed it. The sketch of the Alps was soaked in his own tears.  
He pushed the chair back, put his coat on and opened the door of his little wooden house. It was windy and snowy outside, as what one would expect in the winters of Switzerland. He could see the warm yellow lights in the cities and towns outside the wild woods, probably with the human families having their dinner together, and people gathering in the churches for the Christmas carol services.  
He stood at the doorstep for a long time, until his fingers turned numb because of the wind. He sighed, put a hand on his door frame and bowed his head to stare at the ground. Everything was covered in snow, pure, white, but freezing cold.  
Deniss suddenly slammed his door close and collapsed into his armchair. It had been more than a hundred years. To be precise, it was the 127th year for him to be back into solitude.  
He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk, with stiff and numb fingers, and took out a small wooden box hidden away in the deepest corner of that drawer.  
He held the box in hand as if it’s the most precious thing in his world, and slowly lifted the lid. There were only four things inside: two pieces of paper, a necklace with charms on it, and a rusted key.  
He didn’t unfold the two pieces of paper. The paper had turned to a pale yellow color and become brittle, and the ink was fading away. He didn’t need to actually read it again to know what was on them. He had read the letters so many times that he could remember each and every word, the corrections they’ve made when writing it, the words crossed out and re-written, and even their handwriting.  
He took the necklace out. It was golden colored, with a round charm and another cross-shaped one. He always kept it in a resealable plastic bag, so that it wouldn’t hurt when he, a vampire, touched the cross. He remembered that Staphane always wore it, but it was always safely hidden under his clothes.  
But Deniss removed it from the bag tonight. The thin chain dangled on his fingers for a while, before he knelt down on the floor and clasped the cross in between his palms.  
A burning pain hit him the moment his skin came into contact with the cross. In fact, holding a cross was just like holding a piece of red-hot metal for a vampire; but tonight, it was more like a flame. It was definitely painful, but he felt some warmth in this chilling snowy night.  
Deniss closed his eyes, bowed his head, and prayed.  
Of course he wasn’t any kind of Christian or Catholic. No vampire believed in human’s Gods, as far as he knew. He wasn’t really sure who he was praying to, maybe to his mentors and guardians who would be watching him from high above, maybe to his friends who would be working on the same thing along with him, maybe to himself.  
He didn’t pray for success, didn’t pray for his dreams to come true. He prayed for wisdom, for strength, and for bravery.  
Allow me to always be calm and rational, to always think before I speak or write. Give me wisdom so that I know what to do. Grant me the strength to face challenges in difficult times and to never give up.  
The necklace dropped to the floor as Deniss finished his prayer. He almost couldn’t kneel up straight anymore because of the pain, and his shirt was sticking to his back with sweat. He stared at the two cross-shaped burns on his palms. The skin was scalded with red swollen edges, but they were healing fast once he dropped the cross.  
He remembered the burns on Stephane’s lower back after the incident in Vevey. He remembered Elizaveta driving all the way back at midnight, probably way above the speed limit, to ask for Chris’s help. He remembered Stephane being brought back, pale and unconscious. He remembered the coat of arms burned into his skin, which would definitely leave a permanent mark on humans. He also remembered reading the online articles and newspapers after the Responders disclosed the incident to the Arbitration Court.  
The pain on his palms quickly faded away, and Deniss propped himself up. He stared at the golden cross, which was reflecting the flickering light from his lamp.  
The vampire picked the necklace up, carefully blew the dust away and replaced it into the box. He locked the drawer again, and grabbed a handful of tissue paper to press his drawing dry.  
The faint sound of Christmas carol stopped, and the church bell struck midnight.

**Author's Note:**

> I really love 'sainte nuit', the french version of 'silent night holy night'. There are many great chorus versions of this song!  
> Steph had sung a little bit of this song in a TV show, 'al dente'.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The two hundred years](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19831081) by [acupofteaime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acupofteaime/pseuds/acupofteaime), [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)




End file.
